It’s Just Poetry

Writing a bad poem is fun.  Writing a good one is damn hard work.

I suppose that seems obvious, doesn’t it?  But after spending a week trying to write my first big girl poem, I have an even deeper appreciation for the Ted Koosers of the world.  To write a poem that a reader understands and appreciates is a tiny miracle.  To make a reader happy she spent a few minutes of her day reading your piece is an even bigger miracle.  How on earth do great poets do it?  Can they please bottle their magic and sell it?

In the first week of my workshop, I shared a poem I had written several months ago.  Now in week two, I’m about to share a poem I’ve written under the influence of my talented teacher and fellow workshoppers.  It feels like hosting a dinner party, and admitting to your guests that you’ve burned the fish, just before you serve it: Please accept this really bad piece of work, and let’s all hope it goes better next time.  If this were a poetry cage match, I’d come out of the cage in shreds.

What, you think I’m going to post this new, improved, bad poem?  Are you nuts?  Instead let me share a silly little poem I wrote – one of the good ‘ol bad ones:

Silly Little Poem (previously titled “Dare”)

Go ahead, light me up

Send me to the moon
Stand me on my head
Shove me off the high dive
Spin me blind-folded
Tip my canoe

Go ahead, Poet,
I triple dog dare ya

See what I mean?  Wasn’t that fun?  Bad, but fun.  I know they say anything worth doing, is worth doing well.  But sometimes it’s just fun to do something not so well, just for kicks.  After all, it’s just poetry.

Climbing into the Arena

In Daring Greatly, Brene Brown cites this passage from Theodore Roosevelt’s speech, “Citizenship in a Republic”:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…”

This week I climbed into the arena:  I began my first poetry workshop.  Two evenings a week, for the next six weeks, I will join a professor and seven poets to study poetry and critique one another’s work.  It is both terrifying and wonderful.

Why on earth would I be terrified of a few poets?  Let’s say you want to learn to paint, but you’ve never picked up a paint brush.  So you enroll in a painting class.  On the first day of class, you plant your easel beside a man with gray, frizzy hair.  And then you realize it’s Claude Monet.  Wouldn’t you be intimidated?  That’s how I feel in my poetry workshop.  The other poets have been writing for decades.  And here I am, picking up my pen for the first time.

Luckily, they are a gentle, generous group.  They are happy to share their wisdom with me and patient with my Poetry 101 questions, like “What exactly are the rules on punctuation?” and “How on earth do I decide where to break lines?”  These poor folks should ask for their money back.

As for me, I’m reminded of business school, where I grew accustomed to being the least experienced person in the room.  Sitting in a finance class, I was the psychology major in a sea of Wall Street veterans.  Do you know what I learned?  The least experienced one in the room has the most to gain.  When I had a question, all I had to do was ask the person to my right or left.  I learned so much from my classmates.  I shed my fear of asking for help or admitting I didn’t know the answer.  So, in a room of veteran poets, I’m not shy about asking questions or admitting I’m a beginner.  If I can survive the Wall Street veterans, I can handle a few poets, right?

My Gem Collection

I write everything down – ideas, lines of bad poetry, Target lists, bits of wisdom, what time to take a shower, the name of a book to read – I mean everything.  I am a copious note-taker in classes, in meetings, and in my car.  I just don’t feel right if I don’t have a notebook and pen at my fingertips.

When I worked as a real estate developer, I traveled and met interesting people from all walks of life.  I took to writing down their bits of wisdom and humor.  I had the honor of working for years with a very accomplished and wise gentleman from Memphis, who became my professional mentor and personal Yoda.  One day, we had just finished lunch, when he said, “You don’t build relationships when you need something.  You build relationships when you don’t need something.”  Back in my office several days later, I was still thinking about this pearl of wisdom. I wrote it down and pinned it to the bulletin board I kept over my desk.

After another trip to Memphis, I started recording his Southern-isms, like this one: “He jumped on that faster than a duck on a June bug.”  Here’s one of my favorites: “Alison, you got to work on your spittin’ and whittlin’.  When you see someone, you can’t just jump into things.  You got to ask how’s your Mama, and he’s got to ask how’s your Mama.”  You just can’t find better material than that, can you?  I still have that list of Southern-isms pinned to my bulletin board.

If you pay attention, people will offer up the most incredible insights.  Another gentleman, one of my most respected mentors and favorite human beings, for years has said to me, “The truth will set you free.”  That little gem was scribbled on a Post-It and pinned to my bulletin board, but there was no need.  It floats through my head every day.  I’ll bet it’s etched somewhere on my frontal cortex.  In business and in life, the truth will set you free.  How can you argue with that?

I’d like to thank all you mentors and Yodas out there.  We young souls need all the help we can get.  Thanks for dropping a few breadcrumbs on our paths.  I’ll just keep picking them up with my pen and notepad.  I hope I don’t miss too many.

Learning to Be a Housewife

This sabbatical is an experiment:  What happens if I change my identity from “real estate developer” to “mother”?  From the first moment I changed hats, I noticed changes in myself and how others treat me.

On the second day of my sabbatical, I picked up my son from school.  One of the administrators said to me, “Oh, look at you!  You’re dressed differently!”  When I explained that I wasn’t wearing my normal business casual attire because I had just started a sabbatical, she replied, “Oh, you’re just a mom now!”  It was my first data point.  I didn’t write it down, but I’ve never forgotten it.

Over the course of my experiment, I’ve noted the different responses I’ve gotten from men and women when they learn I’ve taken a sabbatical.  Women have three responses.  The first is, “Good for you!  I know how much you were struggling to juggle everything.  I’m happy for you.”  The second is, “I wish I could do that!  You’re so lucky.”  This is the most difficult response to handle because it momentarily overwhelms me with guilt and shame.  Typically it takes me an hour to recover.  The third response is, “That’s too bad.  After all those degrees and all that schooling, are you worried about whether you will respect yourself and whether others will respect you?”  Luckily this one is the rarest of the three.  When I get this response, I retreat into my shell like a frightened turtle.

Men also have three responses.  The first is, “That’s great.  My wife stayed home with our kids, and it was the best thing for our family.”  The second is, “I’m not surprised.  I always wondered how long you’d last.”  The third is, “Oh, really?”  Those guys are just wondering what the score is on the game.

Do you want to know what I’ve learned so far?  I’ve learned not to judge others.  I’ve learned that it takes years, a wealth of shared experiences, and trust to really know another person.  And I’m reminded of that adage about walking a mile in someone’s shoes.

On the day I changed my identity from “real estate developer” to “just a mom”, I didn’t change a bit.  I just changed how I spend my time.  Up to that point, a large part of my identity had been tied to my occupation.  But my occupation never fully captured who I was or how I wanted others to perceive me.  Something very interesting happens when you strip away the title.  You feel a little naked, a little exposed, a little vulnerable.  Try your own experiment.  Try completing the “Occupation” line on a form with something that has nothing to do with your work.  See what happens.

A few months ago, I received an email from a friend, with this quotation from a book:

“If every woman made the same decision, how would my children learn that sometimes motherhood looks like going to work to put food on the table or stay sane or share your gifts or because you want to work and you’ve earned that right.  And that other times motherhood looks like staying home for all of the exact same reasons.  As far as I can tell, no matter what decision a woman makes, she’s offering an invaluable gift to my daughters [and sons] and me.  So I’d like to thank all of you.  Because I’m not necessarily trying to raise an executive or a mommy.  I’m trying to raise a woman.  And there are as many different right ways to be a woman as there are women.”

If we want to lift women up, if we want to raise them higher, let’s stop judging them.  Let’s start reaching out to each other.  Let’s start talking.  Talking leads to understanding, and when we understand one another – I mean, really understand the complexities we all face – the dominoes start to fall: empathy, connection, collaboration, empowerment, action, and change.

So what’s the key to becoming a housewife?  The key is to know you’re the same person as you always were.  The key is to know yourself, or get to know yourself.  The key is to abandon judgement.  The key is to know who you are, and lean into it.

Getting Lost

When you receive one message from multiple sources, you have to sit up and pay attention.

The last chapter of Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly begins with this line from poet Antonio Machado: “Traveler, there is no path, the path must be forged as you walk.”  Brown uses this line to illustrate her research methodology, which is based on grounded theory research.  It is an emergent approach to research, in which, rather than starting with a hypothesis and testing it, researchers collect data and then search the data for conclusions.

When I read about Brown’s research methodology, I thought of a phrase writer Pam Houston used during a recent interview on Brad Reed’s podcast, “Inside Creative Writing.”  When asked to describe her writing process, Houston alluded to “the forest of not knowing.”  When she sits down to write, she tries not to concern herself with where a piece is going, what will happen next, or how it will end.  She gets lost in the forest of not knowing and trusts the piece will emerge in time.

Doesn’t Houston’s writing process sound like grounded theory research?  “Traveler, there is no path, the path must be forged as you walk.”  The traveler must get lost in the forest of not knowing.  Isn’t it amazing that two vastly different fields benefit from the same, emergent process?  Brene Brown describes her research as “story-catching”.  What is a writer, if not a
story-catcher?

I suppose we are all story-catchers.  I suppose we all need to get a little lost in the forest of not knowing.  After all, isn’t that why we’re here?  Don’t we all have a path to forge?  Time to pick up our walking sticks and step onto our paths.  If we get a little lost, let’s not worry.  Our stories will emerge.

Distracted Driving

Having (re)made my peace with poetry, I scribbled this in my notebook:

More Please

I’d like to fill a bathtub with words
and soak in them

I’d like to pour words on a bed
and roll around in them

I’d like to string words, popcorn, and dried cranberries
and decorate the mantel with them

I’d like to pile words on a sugar cone
and lick them as they melt down the sides

I’d like to stuff words in a piñata
and beat it until they come bursting out

I’d like to fill a pot with words
and heat it to a boil

If only I had a better vocabulary

Well, it’s a (re)start.  It came to me as I waited for a traffic light to turn green.  If I had hit a stop sign, who knows what would have happened.  I’ll tell you one thing:  it’s just plain fun to write and drive.  It sure beats spilling your coffee on your pants.

How My Rusty Bike Returned Me to Poetry

Until yesterday, my poetry books were gathering dust on my desk.  To tell you the truth, I’d gotten a little disgruntled with poetry.  I just couldn’t understand why so much poetry is critically acclaimed and yet completely unintelligible to most readers – not to mention how difficult it is to write a compelling poem.  So I turned to short stories.  As it turns out, writing a short story is like pulling a white rabbit out of a hat.  Both forms require the work of a magician.  So how do writers know which one to adopt?

The answer came to me yesterday morning, during a bike ride with my daughter.  As we coasted along, with my daughter chirping happily in the trailer, I studied my bike.  I thought of how I had bought it in 1993, when I was a freshman in college.  I thought back to the 1993 – where I was, what I was doing, and where I would go next.  Suddenly I realized that I now have everything I had secretly wished for in 1993: a happy marriage, children, a home, and a sense of intellectual satisfaction.  I was overcome with gratitude, and I had a strong sense of the present.  In that moment, I knew my life could not get any better.  I could stop searching for the next, bigger, better stage of my life.

Of course I had the urge to write it all down – the moment, the feeling, the gratitude – but it wasn’t a story.  I didn’t want to fictionalize it or document it in prose.  I simply wanted to capture it and share it, like a kid who catches a firefly in a jar, on a summer night.  And then I realized something:  that, my friend, is a poem.  It’s a feeling, a thought, or a realization you want to capture and share with the world.

So, I picked up a dusty poetry book and decided to read until I found a poem that sings to me.  I found it.  Here it is:

In Our Woods,
Sometimes A Rare Music

By Mary Oliver

Every spring
I hear the thrush singing
in the glowing woods
he is only passing through.
His voice is deep,
then he lifts it until it seems
to fall from the sky.
I am thrilled.
I am grateful.
Then, by the end of morning,
he’s gone, nothing but silence
out of the tree
where he rested for a night.
And this I find acceptable.
Not enough is a poor life.
But too much is, well, too much.
Imagine Verdi or Mahler
every day, all day.
It would exhaust anyone.

From A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver. Copyright 2012 by Mary Oliver.

In one sitting, I read seventy-one pages of Mary Oliver’s book, A Thousand Mornings.  I read the poems quickly, in a half hour.  Perhaps I should apologize to her – after all, can you imagine the time it took to compose those marvelous poems?  But I was gobbling them up like a half pint of Graeter’s ice cream on a night alone on the couch.  Every bite was delicious.  Every one made me gasp and say, “Oh, that’s good!”

I’d like to thank my bike, my daughter, and Mary Oliver for leading me back to poetry and answering a long-standing question.  I’m reminded of poetry’s beauty, relevance, and power to connect us with one another.  Poetry is a conversation about the human experience.  And there’s nothing like a little talk therapy to cure what ails us.